Road Trip to France

In just a few short weeks, we will hit the halfway point of Tony's tour in Italy. Deny, deny, deny. It's hard to believe time is flying by so quickly, and we will be on the downhill stretch come October. I keep saying that the list of places to visit and things to do keeps getting longer and longer, and the time in which to do those things just gets shorter and shorter. Not only do I not want to leave Italy, but I don't even want to THINK about leaving Italy. However, I want to maximize our time here and so that means I do a fair amount of both dreaming and planning. Earlier this spring, around our one-year mark and just before a long-ish deployment, I asked Tony to think really hard about what his top trips would be. He definitely does not get to experience Italy the way I do, and while he graciously says, "At least one of us gets to enjoy it," I wanted to make sure we are able to check some things off of his list. His requests? Rome, Paris, and a tour of Ireland. 

Originally I thought we'd be able to visit Rome together when my mom comes to visit, but he will still be gone during that time frame. Oh well, it just means my fun adventure with my mom will also be a scouting trip for Tony! I'm not sure when we'll be able to visit Ireland, but we were able to head to France together earlier this summer. It was a timing fluke, since we weren't supposed to see each other again until the fall, but it actually worked out perfectly for us to spend some quality time together after I got back from my six-week trip to the States. Well, things didn't work out exactly according to plan since I have abysmal travel luck, but it was still a good opportunity for us to vacate the premises and have a nice little vacay. I was supposed to arrive at 0900 on Thursday morning, take the car to get fixed at 1000 morning (since I was hand-carrying the correct parts with me from Florida), and depart for France around 0700 morning. I got delayed in New Jersey for a little over 24 hours, so I didn't arrive in Venice until morning and didn't get back to Vicenza until after lunch. I picked up the rental car around 1500 and headed home to a) eat b) nap and c) unpack/pack. 

We hit the road in our trusty little rental car around 0730 morning for what we expected to be a ten-hour drive. Ha! HA HA HA HA! Our trusty little rental car ended up being not so trusty, pulling the exact same damn trick that our Honda has been pulling for the last 8 months: it randomly shut off while driving. Tony had the first leg of driving, and I didn't even notice anything was wrong until he started pulling over onto the shoulder. Of the highway. Where we'd been traveling at about 130 kilometers per hour. It was a really strange sense of deja vu, truth be told. We sat on the shoulder for a minute in stunned disbelief, and I started shuffling for the rental agreement to get some phone numbers from it while Tony attempted to re-start the car. It worked, so we cautiously decided to keep going. About five minutes later, the car did the same thing, so we had confirmation that something was egregiously wrong. I called the rental office and said we had a problem, and he directed us to roadside assistance and assured us they would be able to speak English. Meanwhile, Tony turned to Ye Olde Google and determined there was another rental office about 6km away, so we decided to see if the car would get us that far and hopefully save some time swapping out cars instead of waiting for a tow truck. We were somewhere to the west of Verona, and we could see Lake Garda, but I have no idea what small town we wound up in. Fortunately, the agency was open and there were no other customers, so we were immediately able to explain the problem and start working on a solution. The very kind lady said she only had one car available - a Smart Car - but if we wanted to go back to Verona they'd probably be able to give us something a little larger. We elected to take the Smart Car, and I am immensely grateful that we didn't pack our golf clubs or an ice chest, because our stuff barely fit as it was! We had to Tetris it in the car and even the difference in seat settings to account for Tony's height versus mine had a huge impact on available storage space. We had two boxes of audio cds from the library that we ended up cramming under one of the seats because there was nowhere else to put them. And of course the new car didn't have a cd player, so there went that plan out the window! Oh well, c'est la vie. All in all, we only lost a little more than an hour. Onward!

When we left Italy, we were in the midst of a heat wave that seemed to last all summer. It didn't dip much below 97 degrees until mid-August. We really didn't get much of a break on our road trip until we reached the mountains, but it was noticeable and we were appreciative. We had to wait in line to go through a tunnel (with a ridiculous 40 Euro toll!) at the border, and we shut the engine off and continued listening to an audiobook via Bluetooth. God bless modern technology, y'all. We rolled the windows down and did a bit of people-watching while we waited. There were gondolas running up and down the mountain, we had a nice view of a waterfall, and we saw many people shredding downhill on mountain bikes. Turns out that area is part of a big national (or international) park. It was actually quite pleasant, and we only had to wait about 40 minutes or so. I guess they close the tunnel for an hour or so for traffic in each direction around mid-day for construction, and we hit it right in the middle of the closure. Already, we lost more than two hours on our road trip, but fortunately we didn't have any first-day plans in France. We didn't know before we entered how long it is, but it turns out the Mont Blanc Tunnel is over 11km long! There are signs and lights everywhere warning everyone to keep proper spacing  and not to drive too fast. No big deal in the summer time, but I'm sure in the winter icing can be a problem.

Our sweet little vacation cottage

Once we crossed the mountains, the weather was just about perfect for the entirety of our trip. It was easily twenty degrees cooler in France than Italy. Just think of all the money we saved on our summer utility bill! :P We elected to use some Marriott points, and stayed outside of Paris near Disney. I think it was about 25 miles to Paris and only a five-minute drive to Disney, and we were very happy with the location. I kind of wish we had at least one night in the city to save on the commute time, but the public transit was so easy it didn't end up being a really big deal. The Marriott was mostly a timeshare type village, which was pretty awesome. We basically had a whole cottage all to ourselves, and it overlooked a sweet little garden with lots of lavender and roses and other flowers. Many of them were blooming, but I bet it was even more amazing in the spring. In the distance we could see a little pond and a golf course, and we had easy access to the main building with its bistro, market, pool, and ping pong tables. There was a gym, but we didn't use it once the whole vacation. (We did use the pool, hot tubs, and sauna though.) We were so late getting in that we just opted to eat in the on-site bistro for dinner. After a fourteen-hour road trip we were ready to eat and crash. 

View from our balcony

Our first full day we took it easy and explored the hotel and enjoyed the pool. We also went to the market to pick up some food. This time we actually remembered to pack some spices, olive oil, and other basics for cooking, but were pleasantly surprised by the well-stocked welcome kit in our townhouse. We were able to pick up vegetables and breakfast supplies at the market for decent prices, though after the first day we bought those kinds of things at the grocery store in town. We bought several bottles of wine on site, too, and the markups were pretty reasonable. Even though we had some good wines on our trip, I have to say I prefer Italian wines over French ones. I am biased, of course.

That's all for today. Next up: my first-ever Disney theme park experience!